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Jeff Kaiser

Jeff Kaiser (born December 26, 1961) has played professionally with many different groups and individuals on television, film, radio, and in concert halls throughout the United States. He is the recipient of numerous grants, honors and awards. He is a thirteen-time recipient of the Individual Artist Fellowship from the City of Ventura and a three-time recipient of the Forum of the Arts Grant administered by the Ventura County Museum of History and Art. He has received critical praise in numerous publications throughout the world. In addition to composing, he is well known in creative music circles as a trumpet player, performing with Eugene Chadbourne, The Michael Vlatkovich Brass Trio, Brad Dutz, The Motor Totemist Guild, Headless Household, The Vinny Golia Large Ensemble, Dan Plonsey and the Human Behavio Orchestra, The Los Angeles Trumpet Quartet, The Kreative Orchestra of Los Angeles, as well as his own ensembles including his large group: The Jeff Kaiser Ockodektet. He is the founder and co-director of the Ventura New Music Concert Series, founder and co-editor of the NewCreativeMusic.com, and owner of the pfMENTUM record label and its subsidiary Angry Vegan Records. He has released eleven CDs as leader/co-leader and has also appeared on CDs by Headless Household, The Motor Totemist Guild, Eugene Chadbourne, The Gove County Philharmonic, The Vinny Golia Large Ensemble, and others. He did the musical score and sound effects for the award-winning independent film by Ted Mills, Nowhereland. Nowhereland has been featured at film festivals in Iceland, Poland, Russia, Ukraine, England, Canada and festivals throughout the United States. The title work of his CD Ganz Andere was performed at the opening concert of the 1999 National Conference of the Society for Electro-Acoustic Music in the United States at San Jose State University. Templum-Tempus, also on Ganz Andere, was a runner-up in the PALMARES du 26e Concours International de Musique Electroacoustique, Bourges, France - 1999. Television trumpet performance credits include the HBO series Deadwood. He has been a visiting artist/lecturer positions at Roosevelt University (Chicago, Illinois), Westmont College (Santa Barbara, CA), California Institute of the Arts (Valencia, CA) and California Lutheran University (Thousand Oaks, CA). He has taught workshops at various locations including the Museum of Contemporary Art (San Diego, CA). He is a former music director for the Ojai Camerata. He is one of the founding (and current) members of the Los Angeles Trumpet Quartet.

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201
Album Review

Jeff Kaiser / Tom McNalley: Zugzwang

Read "Zugzwang" reviewed by Glenn Astarita


Southern Californian experimental improvisers Jeff Kaiser (trumpet, electronics) and Tom McNalley (e-guitar, electronics) embark upon a mischievously bizarre sojourn here. Call it what you will, but this studio session serves as the epitome of crazed-out, avant garde sound-sculpting where just about anything is liable to occur. For the record, this is not spacey New Age-type fodder. However, the artists delve into a variety of moods, exploring angst, humor and alien soundscapes. McNalley's electric guitar phrases are generally concise and steeped ...

230
Album Review

Jeff Kaiser / Andrew Pask / G.E. Stinson / Steuart Liebig: The Choir Boys with Strings

Read "The Choir Boys with Strings" reviewed by Jim Santella


In following their duo session, The Choir Boys, with this quartet performance a year later, Jeff Kaiser and Andrew Pask once again reach out into the realm of electronic music, unfettered by convention. The Choir Boys with Strings adds guitar and bass to the mix, giving Kaiser's trumpets and Pask's woodwinds an added layer of sounds. They're wild and raucous throughout, making sure that eerie refrains capture the day.

Each of the four artists converses through his instrument, ...

103
Album Review

The Jeff Kaiser Ockodekete/The Kaiser/Diaz-Infante Sextet: The Alchemical Mass/Suite Solutio

Read "The Alchemical Mass/Suite Solutio" reviewed by John Kelman


With most peoples' ears attuned to common musical elements such as melody, harmony, and rhythm, free improvisation and contemporary classical composition can sometimes come across like disturbing chaos. There are often precious few recognizable patterns to hang one's hat on, and with extended techniques used by some instruments, it can often be next to impossible to ascertain who is doing what. The challenge, however, is to try interpreting such works by absorbing the dissonances and apparent cacophonies on a gut-instinct ...

109
Album Review

Jeff Kaiser-Andrew Pask: The Choir Boys

Read "The Choir Boys" reviewed by Rex Butters


Sound sojourners Jeff Kaiser and Andrew Pask create unique sonic landscapes on The Choir Boys, utilizing both the instrumental expertise for which they are known as well as tapping their broader ambitions with live processing. The music ranges from ambient electronic to industrial Stockhausen, with plenty of hard blowing along the way.

Pask begins with his bass pennywhistle, processed while he plays. The swirling and smearing goes from a pan pipes sound to an impending storm. When the whistle is ...

150
Album Review

Jeff Kaiser Ockodektet/Kaiser-Diaz Infante Sextet: The Alchemical Mass/Suite Solutio

Read "The Alchemical Mass/Suite Solutio" reviewed by Rex Butters


Straight out of Ventura, California, Jeff Kaiser releases the CD version of his recent performance with his Ockodektet and the Ojai Camerata, The Alchemical Mass. A riveting exercise crossing modern composition with improvisation and choral arrangements, all in the service of an authentic 15th Century alchemical text, its author having passed from royal court astrologer to executed heretic fugitive.

Filling out the remainder of the CD, Kaiser presents “Suite Solutio," an earlier outing with a sextet co-led with ...

168
Album Review

The Jeff Kaiser Ockodektet and the Kaiser/Diaz-Infante Sextet: The Alchemical Mass/Suite Solutio

Read "The Alchemical Mass/Suite Solutio" reviewed by Jim Santella


Two progressive artists lead these ensembles in a creative affair. Quiet spaces are interwoven with loud cacophony. A group of orchestral instruments can be made to sound like many things. Here, Jeff Kaiser and Ernesto Diaz-Infante light creative fires and push their ensembles to the limit.

“The Alchemical Mass" combines the formal sounds of church with the kinds of natural motifs that are commonly found in native religious rites. Primal chants and tribal drums are mixed with the ...

129
Album Review

Jeff Kaiser Ockodektet: 13 Themes for a Triskaidekaphobic

Read "13 Themes for a Triskaidekaphobic" reviewed by Rex Butters


Thematically, the new CD by trumpeter/composer Jeff Kaiser would send Howlin' Wolf running for a rabbit’s foot. 13 Themes for a Triskaidekaphobic features a large band comprised of some of LA’s most creative improvisers including Lynn Johnston, Mike Vlatkovich, Vinny Golia, Jason Mears, Richie West, Dan Clucas, and Kris Tiner. The hyper literate Kaiser named his themes after titles from the novel Tristam Shanty. Clocking in at exactly 1:13:13, the suite proves Kaiser to be a composer of richly varied ...

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